by Adele Parks
‘I don’t want to think that but it’s possible and maybe—’
‘Maybe what?’
‘Well, maybe that’s better than the alternative, you know. Someone taking her. Someone hurting her.’
25
Kylie
Thursday 19th March
I wake up because I sense movement. The lack of food has made me sluggish now, and I only manage to shake myself fully into consciousness as I hear the door bang behind him. The opportunity to identify which husband is doing this to me is lost. One moment I am sure it is Mark who might accuse me of not caring for the boys. The next I wonder, is it Daan who might declare I only care about myself. I don’t know. I can’t hold on to my concentration long enough to chase a theory thoroughly. I am so hungry. So scared. I see there is another food tray and more water. I pull at the edge of my jumper. Trying to cover up. I’m not being modest, that wouldn’t make sense; both men have enjoyed those parts of my body many times, and besides I’m alone in the room now, but my nakedness and the foul bucket leave me exposed, vulnerable, like a badly treated animal, caged by the circus ringmaster.
I crawl to the food tray and examine it. Two bananas, a protein bar, an M&S superfood salad and a bottle of iced tea. It’s Honest Tea, organic, Fair Trade, honey green, gluten free. Everything is in unopened packaging or its skin. It can’t have been tampered with. It’s safe to eat. I almost laugh. One of my husbands has drugged me, imprisoned and chained me, starved, then poisoned me but has now taken the time to shop for my favourite iced tea. If anything demonstrates how messed up this situation is, then my food tray does.
The shopping could have been bought by either of them. Although I run two separate lives, there is an element of crossover. Sometimes this is uncomfortable. Sometimes it feels very natural. These particular products span both my worlds so the tray doesn’t offer the answer to who my abductor is.
Leigh Fletcher does not eat protein bars, but her oldest son, Oli, does.
Kai eats them after an intense workout.
In the Fletcher home, this iced tea is a treat.
Daan buys it as a matter of routine.
Both Leigh and Kai like an M&S salad.
I don’t usually talk about myself in the third person – in two third people. I know I am both women. I know both women are me. I am not insane. I’m not even self-deluded.
There is another note on the food tray.
Choices have consequences. Weren’t you ever taught that?
I know I should be nothing but penitent, but the sanctimonious nature of the message irritates me. I suppose it’s not that surprising that I can be repentant and irritated at once; I’m the master of complex schisms. Of course, I am aware choices have consequences. It’s one of my mantras that I find myself repeating to the boys. I have never been blasé about what I’ve done, the choices I’ve made. I didn’t really think I would avoid the consequences. Not really, not forever. But this? This is madness, it is disproportionate and cruel. Frightening. My fingers shake as I unwrap the protein bar. I take a small nibble but then hunger cravings overwhelm me. I shove it in my mouth, barely chewing, almost gagging. I swallow it down. What day is it now? I think it is Thursday, but it feels as though I have been here forever. My God, how long might this go on for? I turn my jeans inside out and then pull them on. They are stiff with my waste, so crawling into them is disgusting. I retch at the smell but feel less exposed wearing them.
Before Daan, I had never been tempted to be unfaithful. There were occasionally men that I’d meet at work or even other school dads who threw out suggestive looks, flirty comments and invitations that could have led places. I had no interest whatsoever.
Then Daan.
I tried to keep away from him at the beginning. I broke it off time and time again, every day.
In my head.
Over and over again, I planned the things I would say to let him down gently but when I was with him, it was lightning, a bolt through my body, my being. Penetrating, blazing, exhilarating. Like lightning, once in a lifetime, and like a scar left by lightning, irrevocable and permanent.
I just couldn’t let go.
I thought it was simply a case of a lawless body. He sparked inside me a level of lust that I could not control. Possibly, I didn’t want to. I was arrogant enough to think that wasn’t really a problem, that it would eventually fade away. An infatuation. Inconvenient, but not necessarily devastating. But I was not in control of anything. I started to care. I couldn’t put the brakes on that. Couldn’t? Wouldn’t? I thought I’d get used to him. Maybe then become bored of him. But familiarity did not blunt him.
The confusion is unbearable. I suppose it always has been.
I married both men for clarity. I divided myself for clarity. That sounds paradoxical but it’s not, it’s simple, clear cut. They each got me half the time but at 100 per cent capacity, and how many marriages do much more? I have seen other women at the school gates who spend half their time at the gym, or with their friends gossiping, drinking chardonnay over a long lettuce lunch. Didn’t I give as much to my marriages as they did to theirs? Many of the school mums work and their situation is even harder. I’ve been a wife with a demanding office job, and I know how that pans out. When those women are at home, in their husband’s company, often their minds are still at work: did they reply to that email? Have they proofread that document? Are any marriages more than 50 per cent commitment? At least I was not guilty of letting my mind wander. No matter who I was with, they got my attention. I couldn’t afford to dwell on the other.
When I was with Daan, it was painful to think of Mark and the boys. Awful. I did not want to drag them into a world where I was on all fours, begging another man to take me. And when I was with Mark, and thought of Daan, he seemed incongruous. He was delicious and glamorous. Sometimes, in the early days, he did drift into my mind as I shoved dirty clothes into the washing machine, when I scrubbed ovens or loos, but imagining him seeing me do these grubby household chores was uncomfortable. I didn’t want even the ghost of him near the domesticity, in case he was at all supercilious about the drudgery. I couldn’t allow an imbalance. One thing could not be better than the other. They were equally brilliant. Just different.
I peel one of the bananas. I know I should eke out this food. Ration myself, but I can’t resist. I suppose that has always been my problem. I nibble on it, try to make it last.
I call both places home. Home is where I feel needed and essential to the boys, to Mark; where I am the linchpin. Home is where I am desired and enjoyed by Daan. But the two places are not mutually exclusive in what they supply to me. Mark also desires me. Daan also needs me.
To lessen the confusion, I tried to compartmentalise completely. To hermetically seal one life off from the other. But it wasn’t the answer, not really. I must have thought there was something missing between Mark and me, for Daan to be able to ease his way in, settle and find a place. The glamour perhaps? The freedom. No matter how hard I tried to keep Daan out of the life I shared with Mark, his existence took something from that original life. Something was lost. Innocence, simplicity. However many barriers I placed between them, I couldn’t hem that in. It drained away. It drained away when I bought a second phone, when I opened up a new email account. It disappeared altogether when I agreed to marry him.
I look around the small, rank, locked room. The very antithesis to glamour. To freedom.
I am jolted from my thoughts by the sound of paper being threaded into the typewriter. The sound is a taunt, a threat. Yet somehow, it is a chance too. I scramble towards the door and listen to the keys being struck. A short blast, like gunfire. A sheet of paper is shoved under the door. I perform the usual acrobats to drag it towards me with my feet.
Why a second marriage?
Why not an affair like everyone else?
I consider the question, how it is phrased. Who does it sound most like? Daan? Who would ask this? Mark? But I realise that the important thing right now
is to answer the question, keep him talking. It is the way I’m most likely to bring about a resolution. I can think about who is behind the notes when I am alone. I open my mouth but my voice cracks. I don’t know where to start. Words stutter in my throat. I am tired, dehydrated, but that’s not the problem. The words I’ve swallowed for so long have to be spat out. My survival used to depend on my silence. Now I think it depends on what I say. The truth that is unpalatable to Mark might soften Daan – but dare I risk confessing it? I could cause more pain, more anger depending on who is on the other side of that door.
People talk about the value of truth all the time. The importance of it. They pursue it as though it is the elixir of eternal youth, as important as life itself. It is not. It’s just not. Often the truth is brutal, which is why most of us avoid telling it most of the time. I have regularly been more frightened by the truth than by a lie. A lie, undiscovered, keeps people safe. A lie can be quiet, non-violent.
You want the truth?
I could not walk away from him.
Every time my phone buzzed to say a message or email had arrived it was as though he had tugged on the rope that bound us. Pulled me back to him. Every moral code I had ever lived by told me not to reply and respond. Yet I did. Rational thought insisted I simply stop visiting his flat, stop agreeing to his dates and yet I didn’t. And instincts that normally facilitate my self-preservation demanded that I did not turn up at the register office; yet, something bigger overrode all that. Longing? Lust? Love? I don’t know. I just couldn’t stop myself.
I am addicted to him.
‘I didn’t plan to go through with the second wedding,’ I admit carefully. Even as I let Daan push his engagement ring onto my finger, I thought it was impossible, a game. A sick game, I suppose, but one I was somehow compelled to play, unable to quit. ‘I thought we might row and break up.’ We did sometimes row, but only as a precursor to a passionate making-up, we would bounce back together, iron filings clasped to a magnet. ‘I thought I could disappear before the wedding. Ghosting is cowardly, I know. Cruel. But I thought it was all I had the strength to try.’
I knew Daan wouldn’t be able to find me, to track me. I could disappear from his world, he would never be able to track down Kai Gillingham. There was no paper trail under that name. And he would never have been able to track down Leigh Fletcher, he didn’t know she existed. ‘Every day I woke up knowing I had to pull out, sooner or later, I had to call it off.’ I had to disappear back to my old life, my real life. I had got carried away, what I wanted was impossible. But God, how I wanted the impossible. I wanted them both.
Yet, at the same time I wanted it to stop. More contradictions. More paradoxes.
I didn’t know how to make it stop. I just could not walk away from him and know he was in the world, continuing. Seeing other women, speaking to them, favouring them, kissing them, fucking them, maybe ultimately even loving them. I couldn’t bear to think of that. I guess that was selfish of me. Well, it was, I know, but it was hard enough thinking about the life he’d had before me. The women he’d had before me. I couldn’t stand for there to be anyone after me. I just couldn’t give him up. Besides, then he got a job in the UK. He did so much to be with me. I didn’t know how to get myself out of it.
Daan keeps me busy and amused. He always has a bunch of ideas about what we could do, how we can spend our time. It stopped me thinking. I did things with Daan that I’d never have done with Mark. I don’t mean in bed, both men got fairly equal attention there. Or at least, both men got what they wanted there. I mean, I have had different experiences with Daan. I’ve been places, heard stories, met people, seen countries that were beyond Mark’s and my reach, or even imagination. Daan and I are a busy couple. Always occupied. It’s tricky to pin us down for a dinner or theatre date. Our schedules are booked up for weeks in advance. Maybe, if Daan’s personality type was closer to Mark’s, I might have had more time to think about what I was doing. To regret it. As it is I have been too busy for regrets. Being busy is a lot like being fulfilled.
Daan wanted a big wedding too, but his vision was nothing like Mark’s. It was impossible not to compare. Daan didn’t want a marquee in the garden, kids running around, wildflowers in jam jars, he wanted something sophisticated, oozing London chic. He had a number of friends who had married a year or so before we got engaged; the wives in those fresh couples rushed to give us recommendations on the hippest venues, the most sought-after florists, dress designers and pastry makers. Daan’s friends are all extremely stylish, they are the beautiful people that run the sort of Instagram accounts that terrify the rest of us. However, they were friendly enough with me from the off, they seemed delighted that Daan had finally found someone he wanted to marry. There is no doubt in my mind that before me, he’d been what my mother would call ‘quite a womaniser’, he’d never been in a relationship longer than six months. Daan’s friends gave me the impression that, before we met, he was the sort that bobbed and weaved in and out of many lives, avoiding the punches, leaving nothing worthwhile behind. He never wanted to be tied. He didn’t like to make plans that reached forward into the future, a future he wasn’t prepared to gift to anyone. But, by the time we met, that must have been quite exhausting for him and frustrating for his friends. Not to mention heartbreaking for all the women who had fallen in love with him and yearned for more. His intrinsic independence meant he didn’t want to be caught. I suppose that is why my repeated absences worked for him. He also didn’t want children. So my barrenness worked too. When we are polishing our meet-cute story – bringing it out in company and burnishing, buffing it – we don’t tell our friends about the joint or the sex acts in the disabled toilets.
I don’t tell them about the other husband.
‘So eyes across a crowded art gallery?’ they ask.
‘Gallery steps to be accurate,’ I reply with a smile.
‘How romantic.’
And it was romantic.
His friends were delighted that he had found someone he was prepared to change his ways for, and that he’d chosen someone who appeared down-to-earth, normal. His female friends placed soft, manicured hands on my arm, squeezed conspiratorially and whispered that his exes had all been high-maintenance or shallow. They thought he had grown up. Picked wisely.
They had no idea.
Thinking about it now, all this time later, I suppose Daan sensed in me something not quite reachable and he found that fascinating. Some men always want what is just out of their grasp. I offered him a perfect blend of intimacy and detachment that most clever people find intriguing. He likes my tight bodycon dresses that say I want his attention, combined with my laissez-faire attitude and general abstraction that suggests I don’t – or at least if I do want it, I don’t need it. I am a challenge. Or I was. I wonder what I am now? A disappointment. A regret. A failure. Daan doesn’t like failing at anything.
You can meet a lot of people, spend a lot of time with them but still not know them. They do not know you. Sometimes that is the aim. Daan is a talker. He tells stories constantly. His whole life is divided like a book into chapters. His sporty school days, his idyllic family life, his interesting time at Harvard, the wild party years. The anecdotes all ooze a sense of accomplishment and happiness. They are well-rehearsed, often recited but still chime with sincerity. His life has been blessed, fortuitous. Until meeting me, I suppose. I know one hundred times more about him than he will ever know about me. I wonder how this chapter of his life will be served up in the future. The period when his darling wife went missing, was torn from him, or perhaps the time when he imprisoned his bigamist whore of a wife. Although, who would he tell that story to?
26
Daan
Friday 20th March
‘Oh, Mr Janssen, it’s you.’
Daan freezes. He is not in the mood to chat to anyone and certainly not Alfonso, the officious concierge. Daan would prefer to keep all interactions with Alfonso brief and at the main reception desk.
How can he explain being on the back stairs of the building?
‘You’re still here, Alfonso, it’s late. I thought you’d have clocked off,’ Daan says with a tone he hopes is full of bonhomie and ease, and does not betray the levels of stress he is under. Both men glance about. The back stairs are not dirty, they are befitting of the luxurious apartments, so the walls are painted and there is decent-quality coir carpeting, but neither man expected to see the other and can’t help being a little taken aback. Feeling vaguely wrong-footed.
‘Heading that way,’ Alfonso replies.
He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. Daan always rushed home from work Monday to Wednesday when he knew Kai would be waiting for him, he tends to linger longer in the office on a Thursday and Friday, clearing admin until someone suggests a drink or something. Daan has never considered Alfonso’s homelife. Now he finds he is curious about how other people live, manage. How they negotiate their way through intimacy. Until very recently Daan thought he had everything on lock, that he knew more than the average person about being a successful man. Now he just feels like a bloody fool; the humiliation burns inside him. Who does Alfonso return to of an evening? How does he spend his weekends? Daan thinks back to the rare occasions that he and Kai spent the weekend together. He would book exquisite restaurants, get great seats at the theatre, sometimes arrange for them to go backstage and meet the stars, because often he knew someone who knew someone, and those sorts of things were within his grasp. He would tenderly make love to her. Kissing her body over and over again, almost worshipping it. He thinks about how excited he always was about those precious weekends, how hard he worked to make them perfect from start to finish, certain that he was treating his wife, indulging her, rewarding her for all the time she devoted to her ailing mother.
